22
Victoria Sweet took one last look in the mirror in her front hall.
Hair? Check.
Makeup? Check.
Dress? Check.
Jewelry? Check.
Sanity? Well, maybe not, but what the hey? She was in love. She and Alex had spent a wonderful hour together earlier, and, already, she was aching to see him again. Getting dressed, she had imagined him standing before his mirror shaving, perhaps even feeling just the way she was feeling.
“Ta-da,” she said to her reflection, as she slipped into her warmest winter coat and opened her front door. Stokely was out there at the curb with the engine running and, hopefully, the heat on. It had stopped sleeting finally, but the temperature was dropping.
She somehow managed to negotiate her icy walkway without ending up ass over teakettle. And there was Stokely standing on the curb, holding the passenger side door open. Holding the door open? It was not a Stokely thing to do.
“Evenin’, Miz Vicky,” he said in his best Driving Miss Daisy accent. “Y’all lookin’ partickly fine, this evenin’. Yas’m. Y’all in partickly fine fettle tonight all right.”
“Fine fettle?” she said, climbing in. “Let me guess where you came up with that.” Stokely smiled, shut her door, and went around to the driver’s side. He eased his big frame behind the wheel.
“Fine fettle, yes indeed!” he said.
“Okay, Stoke,” she said. “What’s all this stuff about?”
“What’s all what stuff about?” He cranked up the Hummer and pulled out into the snowy neighborhood street. It was mercifully warm inside the bizarre vehicle.
“Oh, holding my door open,” Vicky said. “All this ‘shufflin’ shoes and silver trays’ stuff.”
“Actin’ on orders, is all,” Stoke said, pulling away from the curb. “Bossman say jump, old Stoke, he leaps around like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs!” Stoke slapped his knee. “Yassuh!”
“Are you on some kind of medication, Stoke?” Vicky asked, grinning at him. “I can tell, you know. I’m a professional.”
“Alex, he says, ‘Stoke, you be nice to Vicky,’ is all I’m sayin’,” Stokely said. “So, I’m bein’ nice to Vicky.”
“Funny, I thought you were always nice.”
“Try to be, mostly. But the boss, now he thinks I need noodging. That’s what folks call encouragement in New York.”
“Noodging.”
“That’s it. He asked me put on this damn sport coat, just for you. Sharp, ain’t it? Boss looks sharp tonight, too. Got on his tux. Man is fixated with tuxedos. Hell, wouldn’t surprise me he wore one he was taking you to KFC.”
“I know. Weird. Do you think he’s weird?”
“Hell, everybody’s weird. You ought to know that more than most folks.”
Vicky nodded her head and said, “I mean, do you think he’s a little bit…abnormal?”
“’Course he’s abnormal! Normal folks is a dime a dozen. Now, maybe I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I do know one thing. Alex Hawke is a fine man. Maybe the finest I ever knew. Rich as he is, that man will do anything for anybody at any time. You know what I’m sayin’?”
Vicky was silent the rest of the way, lost in thought. Stoke had taken a series of turns that brought them to the entrance of the Georgetown Club. A doorman stepped out from under the canopied walk and opened Vicky’s door.
Before she got out, she said, “Thanks, Stoke. I wasn’t trying to get you to say anything negative about Alex, you know. I love him, too. I just thought you could help me understand him a little better.”
“I know what you’re sayin’. He does act funny sometimes, way he dresses and talks and shit. Part of that whole English thing, I guess. But I think it all comes down to this. That boy is chipper.”
“Chipper?” Vicky said, shaking her head. “Yeah, now that you mention it, he is chipper.”
She blew Stoke a kiss and turned away to go inside. It was freezing out in the wind.
“I’m going to tell you something, Vicky,” Stoke said then.
“Yes?”
“I seen ’em come and I seen ’em go. Women been chasin’ Alex all his life. Ain’t no thing. He never cared about one of them. Until you, I mean.”
“Thanks, Stoke,” Vicky said.
“See, you figured the boy out. You want to catch Alex Hawke, rule number one is you don’t chase him.”
“Nobody’s chasing anybody here, Stoke,” Vicky said. “Believe me.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right. Must be the reason why he’s so happy these days.”
The maitre d’ didn’t bother to look up as she approached his podium. He was new, she saw, and didn’t know who she was. When he deigned to lift his head from his reservations book, he was somehow able to look down his nose at her at the same time. Even though Vicky was a good foot taller than he was.
“Oui?” the man said, assuming she was French for some unknown reason.
“I’m meeting someone,” Vicky said. “He may be waiting.”
“The name of the reservation?”
“Hawke. Alexander Hawke,” Vicky said, and started a mental countdown to see how long it took the name to have its predictable effect. One point five seconds.
“Ah, mais oui, mademoiselle! Monsieur Hawke. Oui, Monsieur Hawke, il attenderait au bar. Mais certainement!” the man said, bowing from the waist.
He had metamorphosed from an imperious little snob into a groveling little toad in just less than three seconds. It wasn’t even a world record.
“You prefer smoking or nonsmoking?” he asked.
“You’re new. You probably never heard what my father said about smoking sections in restaurants?”
“Mais non, mademoiselle. He said?”
“He said having a smoking section in a restaurant was just like having a pissing section in a swimming pool.”
He looked at her for a second, not sure if this was funny or serious.
“Monsieur, il est la,” the man finally said, pointing in the direction of the bar. “You go through the door and —”
I’ve known where the bar is a lot longer than you have, buster, Vicky wanted to say, but she merely plucked the menu from his chubby little fingers and headed happily for the bar.
She’d been wondering why Alex had chosen the Georgetown Club. Alex had no idea how happy the choice had made her. It was her favorite restaurant in all of Washington. She still recalled the countless hours she’d spent here alone with her father, Senator Harlan Augustus Sweet. There were fireplaces in every room, all ablaze on a cold, snowy night like this. Large, overstuffed leather chairs were scattered everywhere, and the dark paneled walls were adorned with gilt-framed English landscapes and foxhunting scenes.
Coming here as a little girl had always felt like sneaking into the secret world of men. There was the intoxicating aroma of fine whisky and illegal Cuban cigars, and the clink of ice in crystal glasses. There were whispered stories she was too young for and the raucous laughter at their completion.
“Cover your ears, Victoria” was the way she knew when one of those was coming.
Her father, the retired United States senator from Louisiana, had been a much-loved figure in these rooms. He loved a good story and could tell one better than any man. He could also drink most of them under the table and frequently, to her mother’s dismay, did just that.
If the senator wasn’t at his office or on the Senate floor, he was on the Chevy Chase golf course. If he wasn’t on the golf course, he was here, holding down the bar at the Georgetown Club.
And his curly-haired daughter had always been the little princess by his side. Now she squeezed her way
